When I was a kid, we didn’t have highly detailed McFarlane toys for athletes. Instead, we had Starting LineUps, made by Kenner.
For a while these toys were hot. They were first produced in 1988, and I believe they ran until 2000, at which time the aforementioned McFarlane line had entered the scene.

The Kenner toys weren’t detailed, but the faces sort of looked like the players, and if nothing else the uniforms at least helped us figure out who the figure depicted.

One of the cool things about Starting LineUps, or SLUs, was the fact that they came with at least one card, and sometimes a second card, a coin, or a poster. I liked the figures but I always wanted the cards, because when it gets down to it, I’m a card guy.

While I never personally opened my SLUs when they were sealed — I hung them on the wall — I always traded for the cards when people made them available.

So, imagine the giddiness that came over me this week when I hit a thrift store and saw this.

I asked to see the box up close and could see that it was full of SLU cards.

I then peaked at another box and saw that it, too, had more SLU cards.

I busted into the boxes and stopped immediately when I saw the 1988 Statting LineUp card shown above. It was in the first stack I grabbed. The Jordan hails from the very first basketball release for this set. Crazy to think that this card would be found in the wild like this. Sure, it’s not mint. And true, it’s not worth big money, but this is not a card you should find in a thrift store.

While there was not another Jordan SLU card in the box, I did find many stars and in all nearly 250 SLU cards, most of which are basketball.